1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a printer controller that receives print jobs transmitted from a plurality of terminals, and has a printer perform print processing, an image forming apparatus that receives print jobs transmitted from a plurality of terminals and performs print processing, and a terminal that transmits print jobs to the print controller.
2. Related Art
Recently, the advance of office automation (OA) has led to a situation in many companies where each employee is allocated a terminal such as a personal computer in which word processing or document/image processing software is installed, and documents and illustrations are created. These terminals are connected to a printer server via LAN (local area network), the printer server being a printer controller that instructs a printer to perform print processing. The printer is shared by all terminals, and prints out the printed sheets for created documents and the like. Here, information required for print processing is referred to as a ‘print job’, and one or more printed sheets that have been printed and emitted by the printer as a ‘printed document’.
The printer server temporarily stores a print job transmitted via the LAN from the terminals, reads the print job from the memory and has print processing performed. However, while the print job is still being processed, other print jobs may be transmitted one after the other from a plurality of other terminals, and so a plurality of print jobs may be stored in the memory. In other words, a plurality of print jobs may be waiting to be printed. In this case, once printing of the print job in progress is completed, a conventional printer system would print the print jobs stored in the memory in order from the print job that was the first to be received.
However, depending on how a terminal is currently being operated, print jobs which are not particularly urgent may be mixed in among the print jobs stored in the memory. Take one example. An operator A issues instructions to print a number of print jobs via a terminal A, and then continue to operate the terminal A in order, for example, to produce another print job. Since the operator A does not soon go to collect the printed document, it is likely that print processing for these print jobs is not very urgent. At the same time, an operator B issues an instruction to print a print job via a terminal B, and then soon goes to collect the printed document, suggesting that print processing for this print job is urgent. However, when a conventional technique in which print processing is performed on print jobs in the order in which they arrive at the printer server is used, the print job from the terminal B may arrive at the printer server when the number of print jobs with little urgency from the terminal A are being printed. In other words, even if the operator B hurries to the printer to go and collect the printed document, they may have to wait for the printed documents for the operator A, who is not in much of a hurry, to be output.
Furthermore, the content and progress of the document creation operations for each terminal varies according to the operator involved, and consequently a variety of print waiting conditions are generated. Take a situation in which operator A makes a print instruction for a print job once it has been completed, and once a plurality of print jobs have been completed, goes to collect the corresponding printed documents from the printer at the same time, while operator B makes a print operation for an urgent print job while the print instructions made by operator A are being performed. In this case, the print job for operator B is stored in the printer server memory after the first half of the print jobs for operator A have been stored, and then the second half of the print jobs for operator A are stored.
In such a case, even if the operator B hurries to the printer to collect the printed document, a conventional printer server like the one described above forces the operator B to wait for the first half of the print jobs for operator A, who is still creating the remaining half of their print jobs (in other words operator A is not in such a hurry to get the printed documents), to be printed.